


Not a Happy Ending (and that's okay)

by zinjadu



Category: Princess Tutu
Genre: F/M, Not A Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-27
Updated: 2012-06-27
Packaged: 2017-11-08 16:20:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/445088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zinjadu/pseuds/zinjadu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Like it says on the box.  Written a while ago, rehosting here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not a Happy Ending (and that's okay)

She never thought she’d be so happy being a duck.

When she’d been a much younger duck, more like a duckling really, and she saw the prince with no heart dancing so beautifully she wanted to be anything but a duck right then. She wanted to be able to dance with him and show him that dancing should fill you with joy and happiness and not leave you empty.

The chance Drosselmeyer had given her had been one more likely to cause her own destruction than anything else. She knows that now. She is an older and wiser duck.

Drosselmeyer wanted destruction, destruction of hearts and hopes and dreams. He thought that was the only way to make a good story. Tear everything down and leave it in the dust. She knows that is no way to make a good story.

Good stories come up from the ashes and rise, soar and restore hopes and dreams. And hearts. Hearts most of all.

It took Fakir some time to understand that. To become a better writer than his ancestor ever could be. Fakir believed in her, had faith in what she was doing, and wrote it. Wrote every scrap of joy and love and determination he had into her story. Into the story that saved them all. The story where she danced with her heart.

She almost can hate Drosselmeyer for what he did, what he put Mythos and Rue-chan through. How he cursed them all.

She loves Fakir for what he did. For cutting away all the pain and anger, his and everyone else’s, to give the Prince and the Princess their happy ending. To give a little duck and a poor writer a beginning.

She will never be a girl again. Or Princess Tutu. And that’s okay. More than okay. She has Fakir, and he knows he has her. He writes, stories about love overcoming the odds, no matter what, and he is content.

Theirs is not a happy ending, but happy endings she realizes are the ones that gloss over the years that come after. When the Prince gets fat and the Princess becomes bored. Happy endings are generally anything but.

The Knight and the Duck must be content with their lot in life, find their own lives after the curtain has fallen for all the other players and no one remembers what they did on the stage.

So they settle for the contentment of a clear pond on a summer’s day, with tall cattails swaying in a breeze left over from spring, and little fish ignoring his fishing line that he doesn’t pay attention to either. He will sit on the dock and write, page after page, story after story. She will swim and fly, and bother little old ladies for bits of bread when she’s feeling like meeting new people.

There is no ending, not for them. The beginning is long past, so they settle for living.


End file.
